Stanford's Bing Concert Hall, Palo Alto, Calif. (Photo by Jeff Goldberg)
With few glitches and successful debuts, Pinnacle Bank Arena in Lincoln, Neb., Nashville’s Music City Center, Stanford University’s Bing Concert Hall in Palo Alto, Calif., and Ohio’s Cleveland Convention Center and Medical Mart opened in 2013 to positive reviews and busy schedules.
Venues Today provides an update on these buildings’ honeymoon year of operation and milestones and finds out what’s on the agenda for 2014.
Opening Ahead of Schedule
Nebraska’s Pinnacle Bank Arena is celebrating many successes in its inaugural year. One of the most notable was Mortenson Construction completing the building two weeks early last August in addition to the well-attended grand opening weekend on Aug. 29.
The new venue also hosted 10 major shows in its first 80 days, including sold-out Michael Buble, Jason Aldean, The Eagles, Pink and Elton John concerts.
“Our tickets are selling extremely well; production teams are very pleased with the load-in, power and rigging; and artists have positively commented on the sound in the building and mix in the production,” said Tom Lorenz, SMG project consultant and the arena’s general manager.
To top it off, the University of Nebraska’s men’s basketball team sold out its season tickets, all 15,200, for the first time since the 70s. In addition, season ticket sales for the women’s basketball team, which is expected to finish 12th in the nation, more than doubled.
“The NCAA picked us as one of only four locations to host the women’s regional basketball tournament,” Lorenz said.
In its first two months, the arena bypassed over $2 million in food sales, and it has helped spur more than $70 million in development nearby, including a hotel, restaurants and bars.
“In the district, we’ve recently added a Courtyard Marriott and Hilton Gardens Hotel within blocks of the building,” Lorenz said. “This is separate from the $70-million development.”
A new Adidas store that includes university sportswear also has been successful.
Parking includes a 280-car garage adjacent to the building, a 980-car garage across the street and 700- and 900-car garages under construction. In addition, a 1,300-car flat lot has recently opened.
The arena employs 40 full-time and between 400 and 500 part-time staff.
In addition to the Big 10 basketball schedule, which begins in January for the men’s and women’s teams, Pinnacle Bank Arena plans to host family shows, including monster truck events and ice shows.
“We have strong banquet bookings and expect the concerts to continue, but not at the same pace as in the fall,” Lorenz said. “We’re starting to work with some sports tournaments for the summer and will host Women of Faith next October. We anticipate the schedule will stay full and the event load will remain positive.”
Music City’s New Music Space
Since Nashville’s $623-million Music City Center opened last May, there has been a lot of activity surrounding the 1.2-million-sq.-ft. guitar-themed convention center.
“Meeting planners and groups that have come in here are being blown away by the facility, which makes us feel that we have hit a home run,” said Charles Starks, the venue’s president and CEO.
The grand opening weekend included an open house attended by 15,000 customers and Nashville citizens, a State of the City Address by Nashville Mayor Karl Dean and a Sheryl Crow concert for 10,000.
Since then, Music City Center has hosted the Country Music Association’s Annual Music Festival in addition to a number of meetings and conventions, including the Academy of General Dentistry, Electronic Security Expo and National Association of Music Merchants.
“Although some of these shows were expected, we’ve had many local and regional events here,” Starks said. “We’ve also hosted a phenomenal amount of local catering events in our ballroom.” Centerplate is Music City Center’s foodservice provider.
For a venue that took more than six years to develop, the result was worth the wait. The design team was comprised of architects Thompson, Ventulett, Stainback & Associates out of Atlanta, Nashville’s Tuck-Hinton Architects, and Moody Nolan, located in Columbus, Ohio.
Distinguishing features, including an abundance of natural light and wood finishes throughout, in addition to sustainable attributes such as a four-acre green roof, LED lighting, a 360-gallon underground storage tank for toilet and irrigation water and solar panels, help set the facility apart.
Functionality was a key component in the design of Music City Center. The grand ballroom can seat up to 6,000 at round tables of 10, and includes a functional stage that can be cordoned off by wood panel doors. Freight elevators can accommodate large trucks.
“Our architects consider this the next generation of convention centers, and competitors that have toured the building say it has a hotel feel,” Starks said.
The calendars for 2014 and 2015 are just as full, with the Archery Trade Association show on Jan. 1, the NCAA Women’s Final Four in April and the American Society of Association Executives in August.
“We have 45 to 50 trade shows in our first year and a very busy 2014-15 calendar,” Starks said. “We are proud of this building and the team that we have in place.”
SMG Hired on at Cleveland Center
A lot has happened with the Cleveland Convention Center & Medical Mart in the last year, most significantly the installation of SMG as the management company and Mark Leahy, formerly manager of the Pittsburgh Convention Center, as general manager.
Since the building opened in June, four months ahead of schedule, more than 80 events have been held. Phase II of the project is now underway.
“There are a lot of great stories to tell [with this project],” said Dave Johnson director of Public Relations and Marketing at the Cleveland Convention Center and Global Center for Health Innovation.
The ribbon cutting for the Cleveland Convention Center was held on June 14, and a community open house the following day was attended by more 3,000 local residents.
Located in the downtown area, the Cleveland Convention Center includes 225,000 total square feet of exhibit space divisible into three exhibition halls, 35 meeting rooms, an expansive truck loading dock and a 32,000-sq.ft. column-free ballroom with views of the city’s lakefront.
Built in an L-shape underneath the Cleveland Mall, the venue has 17 truck bays in its adjacent loading dock with direct access to the public auditorium. The Grand Ballroom and meeting rooms include high-tech audio-visual equipment along with an individualized lighting grid controlled by iPad technology.
Located adjacent to the Cleveland Convention Center, the Global Center for Health Innovation serves health and health care innovation, education and commerce through state-of-the-art spaces, programs and virtual offerings.
“We hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Global Center on Oct. 8, commemorating the completion of Phase I of construction and the opening of four suites, including Cardinal Health, GE Healthcare, University Hospitals/Philips Healthcare and Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society Innovation Center,” Johnson said.
The center features four themed floors, including Health and Home on the first floor; People, Patients and Caregivers on the second floor; Clinical Spaces on the third floor; and information technology on the fourth floor.
Both the Global Center and convention center are pursuing LEED certification by reducing the quantity of water needed in the design, optimizing energy efficiency through lighting and HVAC designs, purchasing materials with less environmental impact and eliminating sources of indoor air pollution during demolition, construction and management of the facility.
The uniqueness of the facility has attracted a number of events, not all health and wellness related.
“We have hosted more than 80 events and more than 100,000 visitors since the facility opened in July 2013, including the 2013 National Senior Games, the Cleveland Clinic Medical Innovation Summit and the Cleveland Rock and Roll Half Marathon,” Johnson said. The upcoming year includes a full slate of events, with the Cleveland Beer Fest, Cleveland Home & Remodeling Expo, Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Gala and 45th Annual Regional Emmy Awards.
Adding Concerts to Keep Up with Demand
Owned by Stanford University and run by Stanford Live, Bing Concert Hall’s success in its first year was much bigger than expected.
“We outstripped our five-year plan, so now we’re making a new five-year plan,” said Wiley Hausam, executive director.
This includes an expanded season. In its first six months, there were 35 performances at the 842-seat, 112,365-sq.-ft. venue. For 2014-15, there will be between 55 and 65 shows in addition to summer concerts, which were not held during the inaugural year.
Since its grand opening weekend on Jan. 11, ticket sales have been almost double what were expected, and almost all of the venue’s concerts have sold out.
“When we did a subscription renewal over the summer, we sold out almost half of our shows, which was unheard of,” Hausam said. “To compensate, we added concerts to the current season, along with a new subscription method that is more responsive and flexible.”
In addition to more flexible subscription packages, those with subscriptions can donate their tickets to be resold.
Despite strong ticket sales and opening on time and on budget, the project was not without its challenges. Most notable was the acoustically-sensitive design created by famous acoustician Dr. Yasuhisa Toyota of Nagata Acoustics, which resulted in an audio design that took longer than expected.
Groundbreaking for the $112-million venue took place in May 2010. Bing Concert Hall is the first in a series of three major venues Stanford University is building to create its own arts district. The Anderson Collection will open this year and the McMurtry Building opens in 2015. These will join the existing Cantor Art Museum.
Among the wide range of musical performances at Bing Concert Hall in the past year, including orchestral, chamber music, world music, jazz and popular music, some of the most popular shows included a recital by cellist Yo-Yo Ma, a Beethoven Project by the Stanford Orchestra and a performance by the San Francisco Symphony.
For the upcoming season, there will be more multimedia projects as well as an expanded range of music.
“If coping with success is our biggest challenge, then we are very fortunate,” Hausam says.
Interviewed for this story: Wiley Hausam, (650) 723-2551; Dave Johnson, (216) 904-4444; Tom Lorenz, (402) 441-8744; Charles Starks, (615) 401-1420